Issues of Power and Powerlessness

Issues of Power and Powerlessness

Shor, Mitchell

As I sit to work on this theme, I realize that I don’t really know what it means, or at least what it will achieve that my work with feminism and multiculturalism didn’t already accomplish. As such, I’m only going to look at Shor and Mitchell, but in a question on this topic would probably also bring in some of the people I’ve already talked about.

Ira Shor

In When Students Have Power, Shor experiments with making his classroom more democratic in an attempt to defeat the dreaded Siberian Syndrome. He allowed students to negotiate some of the course policies and how classes were conducted, and even created an after class group (ACG) of students who would tell him how he did and what he could do to serve them better. The result of the experiment seems overwhelmingly positive. Shor explained that more people than ever were invested in the course and its content simply because they had some say in how it was run. He even reached some of the students who began in Siberia; they didn’t move, but they were more engaged in the class than they probably would have been otherwise. The implications of Shor’s research are that when students have some of the power, they are more invested in the course and engaged in the content. They’ve been conditioned to sit in a subordinate position within the classroom their whole lives, but Shor gave them an opportunity to level the playing field and take control of some aspects of the classroom.

Candace Mitchell

In Writing and Power, Candace Mitchell argues that academic power lies in the ability to write in academic discourses. Students who are not given access to the genres and skills required to craft an acceptable academic essay are denied the opportunity to grow through writing, and their chances of succeeding in college and beyond are lowered. Implicit in this systemic hierarchicalization is the notion that if one does not become a good writer, it is the individual (not the institutions) who is at fault; a further implication is that failure stems from the misapplication of skills or failure to work hard enough. Such mindsets are dangerous for students (usually underprivileged or foreign) who think this way. It can cause them to drop out, thus continuing the cycle of keeping power with the few elite (usually white) who have mastered the dominant discourse. Thus, Mitchell argues that comp teachers need to reflect critically on our practices and assumptions (a la Hillocks) to ensure that we do not perpetuate a cycle of marginalization.

How I would answer a question on this theme

As I said earlier, I would incorporate Shor’s and Mitchell’s explicit notions related to power into a larger cultural discussion that could include such authors as Pratt, Hawisher and Sullivan, and Elbow. Including these three sources could lead to an interesting discussion about where power is located in the university and how the comp classroom can serve to deconstruct, decenter, redefine, or displace it.

Multiculturalism in Composition Studies

Multiculturalism in Composition Studies

Kent, Foster, Pratt, Elbow, Mitchell, Smitherman

David Foster

Post Process Theory, as Kent describes it, is based in the notion that there is generalizable writing process to which everyone could comfortably adhere. He argues that the three main assumptions behind Post Process Theory are that writing is public, interpretive, and situated, all of which suggest that each person has an individualized process that cannot be universally codified. However, David Foster is hesitant to let process theory go and embrace post-process theories, specifically a cultural critical approach. He argues that process theory enhanced the importance of schooling by naturalizing it in a framework of analytic conversation between student and teacher. Foster also argues that by leaving behind process and moving to a cultural critical pedagogy, teachers introduce a lot of unnecessary risk to the composition classroom: turning toward the social and emphasizing difference leads to unpredictable and unstable interactions, which then leads to conflict. Thus, comp studies must think carefully about the effects of dissonance and conflict on writing scenes because articulating difference is risky, stressful, and potentially painful.

Mary Louise Pratt

Pratt does not support the Process Movement, but argues for classrooms to confront difference in the way that Foster urges us to refrain from doing so. She explains that classrooms are “contact zones,” or social spaces in which cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other. Pratt points out our classrooms are potentially full of underprivileged and underrepresented students, and that we can change our classroom practice so that they can gain more of a voice in the composition classroom. She suggests that teachers should embrace the difference and incorporate nontraditional assignments (like ethnographic narratives) in order to allow cultures to deal with the tension each one has because it is different from the others. Pratt does not deny that this could potentially be risky (that students could get angry or upset as their culture clashes with another), but she urges that the pedagogical benefits are worth the risk because we will be able to produce a critically aware student body that can approach social and cultural issues in an appropriate manner.

Peter Elbow

Elbow has made many contributions to comp studies, but one of the most important ones is the notion that students should be allowed to compose initial drafts of text in what he calls their “mother tongue(s),” by which he means the dialect(s) with which the students are most comfortable (likely the one they were raised speaking with their family). This means that students could stop worrying about their writing being judged incorrect or inadequate; the classroom becomes a safe space in which they can use their own dialects freely. However, in order for this safety to continue, Elbow argues, it is imperative that students’ final drafts are in Standard Written English (SWE). In other words, they can write as many drafts as they need to in their “mother tongue,” but by the time their final draft is submitted, it must resemble an academic essay (although he admits no such thing truly exists). If students do not learn to translate their home dialects into SWE, we are doing them a grave disservice; though our classroom may be safe for the time being, the rest of the university will not be. Elbow’s notions have implications for multiculturalism because they provide a framework from which to both teach students SWE while encouraging them to maintain their “mother tongue.” He acknowledges that no one speaks SWE as their “mother tongue,” but some have had access to language that is closer to it; the ones whose “mother tongues” are vastly different from SWE need to work through a period of transition, and we should encourage and help students who need it. On the other hand, if we simply try to quash out any minority dialects, we run the risk of writers drifting toward the dominant language and losing their “mother tongues” through lack of use; therefore, we risk wiping out minority dialects. Elbow argues that such dialects will not flourish unless there are legitimized in our classrooms.

Candace Mitchell

Mitchell also grapples with the tension between students being required to write in SWE but also needing to hold onto their home discourse. She argues that we must absolutely teach them how to write in academic settings. Mitchell brings up an instance from her own experience in which she witnessed composition teachers whose only graded writing assignments were journal entries. Such assignments were valuable in that they validated the writing of (especially underprivileged) students who were able to write in whatever way seemed comfortable to them. However, she argues that relying so heavily (indeed, entirely) on a nonacademic form of writing did those students a grave disservice because they did not achieve practice in writing academic discourse. Mitchell explains that the genres of the academy hold the key to power; the students who succeed in such genres as the academic essay are the ones most likely to succeed in college and beyond. Thus, it is imperative that students learn how to write correctly in academic genres; to refrain from doing so is to deny them access to particular forms of discourse that could prove indispensable in the future. Mitchell does not think requiring underprivileged students to learn SWE is unfair or Imperialistic; she sees it merely as a tool for advancement. Indeed she appears to draw from Spivak’s answer to her own question at the end of “Can the Subaltern Speak?”: yes, but only through the dominant discourse. But Mitchelle does not believe the two (a student’s home discourse and the dominant discourse) to be mutually exclusive. Like Elbow, she encourages a classroom space where students’ home dialects are safe but where they are also learning to use translate their writing into the dominant discourse.

Geneva Smitherman

Smitherman discusses the “Students’ Right to Their Own Language,” the document that worked toward wider social legitimacy of underprivileged and foreign students’ languages and dialects and to bring about mainstream acceptance of marginalized cultures, history, and language. The goals of this document are to 1) Heighten awareness of language attitudes, 2) Promote the value of linguistic diversity, and 3) Convey facts and information about language and language variation that would help teach nontraditional students more effectively. Smitherman’s discussion goes well with Elbow’s and Mitchell’s (and really, Foster’s and Pratt’s as well) because, even though this document has been in effect since 1974, it addresses a language issue with which comp studies still struggles today.

How I would answer a question on this theme

Pretty much as I have here, except I would add one more connection among the resources. In order to enact Pratt’s contact zone classroom in a way that would not bring pain and hurt to students (as Foster fears), the teacher would need to adapt Elbow’s and Pratt’s notions about nontraditional discourses in the classroom.

Composition in Rhetorical Theory

Composition in Rhetorical Theory

Since I’m also sitting for a special field exam in Composition Studies, I probably won’t get a question on this, but it’s best to be prepared. In all reality, unless I am asked to address any of these specific authors, I will likely draw from the Comp Studies reading list for an answer on composition.

Berlin, Blair, Pratt, Winterowd

Blair

Blair’s ideas were rooted in the belletristic tradition, which argued that rhetoric and “polite arts” should be categorized as “rhetoric and belles lettres.” He was interested in notions of taste, style, criticism, and sublimity. He largely discounted the canon of invention and instead believed that genius is the key motivator and enabler to coming up with a topic; this genius cannot be affected by the rules of rhetoric and so cannot be taught. Blair is also concerned with taste, which he defines as “the power of receiving pleasure from the beauties of nature and of art.” There are two facets of good taste: delicacy (feeling well and accurately) and correctness (a standard of good sense). He points out that everyone has taste to some degree, but some are more refined than others due to finer organs and internal powers. However, it is possible to develop taste through exposure to art and literature that those with a more refined taste have deemed “good.” Because of his notions about genius and taste, Blair argues that good writers are developed through acquainting themselves with the best authors. At first, these aspiring-to-be-good writers must recreate the writing of the best authors from memory; however, he does not want them to imitate it, but to adapt their own style to the subject and its hearers/readers. Such pedagogy shows that learning writers do not yet have the genius to devise their own topics and so much take them from others, and it seeks to develop the learner’s taste through exposure to the best works.

It should be noted that though many (most?) composition theorists and practitioners find the belletristic notion Blair propagates to be outdated and not terribly useful for our students, many composition teachers still continue to use this pedagogy in their classrooms. These teachers teach FYC using literary texts and ask students to write papers on them, which limits the number of genres they learn and thus rhetorical situations to which they are prepared to respond. Some scholars (Hairston, for example) think that such practices are the result of FYC being house in English departments where literature scholars hold most of the sway; thus, many of the grad students who teach FYC are aspiring lit scholars who do not want to teach writing and so teach lit instead. But that is a discussion for another question.

Winterowd

Winterowd questions the sanity of requiring FYC, arguing that the justification that details its inherent usefulness is not a good enough reason. He argues that Comp’s real effectiveness comes when we shift from context and content to addresser orientation, what he calls “self-expressive writing”; in other words, he calls for the writer to take the center of their compositions in order to express themselves through writing. He argues against Current-Traditional Rhetoric when he states that there is no such thing as good or bad language, except in relation to a purpose; in other words, there are no “right” or “wrong” words as long as they accomplish their rhetorical goal. Such expressive writing will give students a chance to write toward these goals while also feeling motivated to master the aspects of written English because their writing is centered on them. The role of the instructor in this scenario is to lead students to analyze various texts and to provide feedback. The instructor should also focus on process and much as product. Interestingly, Winterowd’s book is divided into three parts: invention, form, and style, and organizational plan that belies what he believes are the three most important aspects of writing.

Pratt

Pratt exhorts us to use our classrooms as contact zones (social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other) when teaching students. Such pedagogy would resists the hegemonic relationships of power in the academy in order to allow students of various cultures and backgrounds the opportunities to learn about each other and question dominant power structures. Pratt’s argument comes a few years ahead of its time: by the end of the decade in which she wrote, many composition scholars were calling for (and some were arguing against) a critical cultural approach that would perform many of the pedagogical moves Pratt describes. For instance, feminist scholars argued for a more negotiative and irenic rhetoric to be taught (instead of the traditional male, agonistic rhetoric), and digital scholars call into question issues of technological access and how it affects the teaching of underprivileged students.

Berlin

In Rhetoric and Reality, Berlin lists several kinds of rhetoric that have influenced compositin pedagogy. First is objective rhetoric, which led to CTR and behaviorist pedagogies that assumed that teachers do not know how good writers write and whose goal was to make the student self-sufficient and responsible for their work rather than relying on teacher approval; some of its proponents were Lynn and Martin Bloom and Zoellner. Second is subjective rhetoric, which is an expressionist approach that relies on solitary activities and considers group activity to be dangerous. Some proponents of this approach were Macrorie, Murray, and Elbow. Third is transactional rhetoric, which led to Aristotelian pedagogy that studied all elements of the rhetorical situation as involved in the rhetorical act and thus considered rhetorical. Two of its proponents are McDowell and Corbett, who argue respectively that comp courses should include persuasive/expository writing and take social problem as subject matter and that they should include moral and aesthetic issues such as arrangement, style, and the awareness of audience in shaping a discourse. Fourth is the rhetoric of cognitive psychology, which seeks to determine how social and psychological structures influence writing process. For example, in 1971 Janet Emig suggested a longitudinal study of students to learn the developmental dimensions of their writing processes. And finally, epistemic rhetoric argues that writing involves the transmission and generation of knowledge; knowledge is dialectical and thus rhetorical construct. Proponents of this kind of pedagogy are Bruffee and Berthoff.

How I’d answer a question on this theme

I’d probably draw from my Comp Studies list for any question on Comp. Many of these resources (except for Pratt) are outdated and largely out of fashion in Comp Studies. Berlin’s book is still important, but he’s also written other more recent(ish) things since then that are more pertinent. Frankly, most of the Comp stuff on the Rhetoric list is just boring and I don’t want to talk about it in an answer unless I have to (and I have a hunch I won’t have to).

Issues of Marginalization in Rhetoric

Issues of Marginalization in Rhetoric

Butler, Gates, Glenn, Pratt, Vitanza

Mary Louise Pratt

In “Arts of the Contact Zone,” Pratt explains that the contact zone is where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of asymmetrical relations of power (colonialism, slavery, and/or their aftermaths). She argues that texts produced in the contact zone have disruptive power: if marginalized group of people produces a text from this area of conflict and inserts it into the dominant print culture, they can interrupt the hegemony of the dominant culture. These texts are often parodic in nature (and thus, intertextual), subversively imitating and poking fun at the dominant culture; they are addressed to both the dominant culture and their own community. The distribution of these texts allows them to take some control of how they consume the texts of the dominant culture: they may not be able to control what the dominant culture emanates, but they can decide what they absorb and how they use it. It can also be a way for underprivileged people’s to let off steam and suppress urges for potentially violent outbursts in response to their subjugation.

 

Henry Louis Gates

A product of a contact zone is the Signifyin’ Monkey. Gates explains that the Signifyin’ Monkey is a way for oppressed Black cultures to safely poke fun at the dominant White culture. Signifyin’ is based on the chaos of “associative relations” that appear as playful puns and figurative (often humorous) substitutions that name a person or situation in a telling manner; it delights in the free play of associated rhetorical and semantic relations. In many ways, Signifyin’ (capital S to distinguish it from “signifying,” which excludes the unconscious associations of a word in which Signifyin’ basks) is like Bakhtin’s double-voicedness because the person who Signifies says two things at once: the literal meaning of the word(s) and its/their figurative, implied meaning(s). Thus, in the Signifyin’ Monkey narratives, Monkey (representing a Black person) can fool Lion (representing a White person) into getting into trouble with Elephant. Monkey Signifies on Lion, and the multiple meanings of Monkey’s words trick the Lion into looking like a fool. These narratives are chiasmatic daydream fantasies of power reversal, and they are only possible because of the double (or triple, or quadruple) meanings of the words Monkey says: slaves could tell these stories to each other right in front of their owners and the White men would take them literally and have no or little idea that they were being made fun of. Thus, these contact zone stories provided (and still can provide) an entire subjugated culture with a way to let off some steam by making fun of their oppressors right in front of them.

Judith Butler

Butler argues that words are also agency; by virtue of thinking something hurtful or threatening, your body physically reacts and prepares to enact that threat. In other words, the body takes on the posture or state of the action it threatens and begins to enact the threat. However, the statement itself is not capable of enacting the threat, and so the threat may never come to fruition if the power dynamic and circumstance behind the performative act are not right. In other words, the situation (encompassing the speaker, the spoken-to, and all their contexts of power relations, cultural backgrounds, etc) must be just perfect for the threat to be enacted. For example, the Signifyin’ Monkey is, at the end of the day, an empty threat when performed by slaves. They can tell threatening stories in which a figurative Black man tricks a figurative White man, making him look like a fool, but the situation prevents the Black slaves from literally tricking the White men in the same manner as Monkey tricks Lion.

Butler also points out that the implication behind the phrase “words wound” is that words are capable of inflicting pain or injury in a physical capacity. She also points out that these words place the listener (the one toward whom the injurious words are aimed) in a subordinate social position, which can result in social trauma if the listener is called by injurious word repeatedly. Bulter questions why such words (such a racial slurs or insults aimed at a person’s sexuality) have such power to inflict pain and marginalization. Legal and political discourse tries to tie the words’ power to contexts, but as Butler points out, efforts to censor such language divorces it from context; in making a document describing why a certain word should not be used, one uses the word in a new context divorced from its offensive nature. Thus, the link between speech act and injury is loosened, which opens up the possibility for a kind of talking back or reclaiming of the injurious word. In other words, this loosened link provides the opportunity for the marginalized groups to reclaim the words that marginalize them.

Butler also examines a tension between regulating injurious language and letting it be used freely: on the one hand, regulation of this language destroys some fundamental aspect of language and subject constitution through language; on the other hand, our dependency on constituting our subjecthood via the ways we are addressed implies that there is a need for some regulations. In other words, we are brought into social position and time through being named, so care should be taken in how we name others; however, regulating how people can be named denies language’s basic function: being an expression of thought.

Finally, Butler notes that speech and conduct are conflated in matters pertaining to sexuality, but not racism. In other words, often a declaration of homosexuality (especially in the military) is taken to mean that the person intends to enact homosexual acts; however, in racist threats, the threat is not taken to mean that the person intends to enact them. Butler argues that homosexual desire should not be conflated with the desire of which it speaks since they are not the same thing; one can be homosexual, she implies, without acting upon that homosexuality, just as one can make a racist threat without enacting it.

Victor Vitanza

Vitanza’s work comes after Glenn’s, but also calls for a broader definition of rhetoric that could recognize more previously marginalized voices as being rhetorically important. He imagines an alternative space where the exiled, silenced, and rejected voices dwell and are given a place from which to speak (perhaps Pratt’s contact zone?). He calls this space the “middle” and argues that it denegates the negated by giving them a voice. Vitanza argues that even though these voices have been systematically silenced and negated (and perhaps, by now, even lost altogether), they can still be profitably read in the History of Rhetoric. Where traditional rhetoricians have attempted to define, obtain, and keep power, these voices (the Third Sophistic) have rethought power altogether by placing it in perpetual displacement.

 

 

Cheryl Glenn

Glenn discusses how women have traditionally been excluded from the rhetorical canon, which has replicated the politics of gender that places women subordinately to men. She argues that what we constitute as “rhetoric” should be redefined to include women; such redefinition recognizes that the traditional agonistic patterns were inscribed by males, and recognizes a broader conception of rhetoric as using language in such a way as to make an impression upon a reader/hearer. One aspect of this new constitution involves seeing Aspasia in the same way traditional rhetoric has seen Socrates. No writing remains of Socrates, and we know most of what we know about him through secondary works, notably Plato, yet we do not doubt that there was a Socrates. Aspasia has suffered a similar fate (we have none of her writings and only hear about her through secondary sources), yet her existence is constantly questioned. Under a new conception of rhetoric, Glenn argues, we have to stop doubting Aspsia’s existence and accept her influence on rhetorical theory, just as we do Socrates.

Glenn studies medieval rhetoricians Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe to show how their rhetoric of religious devotion should be included in the expanded conception of rhetoric. Such proclamations were acceptable because they dealt with the only uncontested (at the time) realm of truth: Christian piety. They exploited this as the only commendable road to feminine wisdom and used it to preach through visionary and mystical writings. Remarkably, both women also spoke in the vernacular, analyzed and responded to their audiences, and used experiential knowledge to fuel their teachings to improve the spiritual lives of both men and women. Glen also calls for the redefined rhetoric to pay attention to intentional silence, as in the case of Anne Askew. Askew was prolific in writing and speaking against the Protestant reformation, but when she was arrested and her inquisitor asked her questions, she refused to answer any of them and instead called for him to present his evidence. Such rhetorical silence was powerful in its denial of power to the inquisitor. Her response also shows that Askew was aware of her audience and exigence and knew that she could not use language to change their attitudes, so she denied them any language at all.

Glenn studies several female rhetorical figures from the Renaissance and earlier, but she leaves the investigation open for other scholars to pick up. Under her more broadly defined rhetoric, many subjugated voices, not just women but also perhaps people of other marginalized cultures and ethnicities, can be recognized for their rhetorical contributions, both in the past and present.

How I would answer a question on this theme

I’d start with defining Pratt’s contact zone, then use Gates as an example of how slaves operated in the contact zone in order to through relations of power into question, even if only very slightly. Then, I’d use Butler for an extended conversation of how the contact zone can be a place where marginalized peoples use the language that oppresses them to fight back. She is also fruitful for a discussion of why words hurt the way that they do and what should be done about it. Finally, Vitanza’s Third Sophistic and voices from the “middle” are a useful way to lead into Glenn’s broadening of rhetoric to include more voices that have previously been silenced or ignored.